


Our Hospitality

by rachelindeed



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Buster Keaton - Freeform, Gen, Reichenbach Angst, Sussex retirement, silent film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 14:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5500349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachelindeed/pseuds/rachelindeed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes did not expect to enjoy film.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Hospitality

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on the watsons-woes LJ comm as part of the Wadvent (Watson Advent) celebrations. Happy holidays!

Many of my greatest pleasures in retirement were unanticipated. I knew that I would have the bees to occupy my mind through otherwise empty hours, but that I should also have Watson came as a welcome surprise. After the Great War, he found the clamor of the city struck too sharply on his nerves.

For a time he spoke of purchasing a house nearby, but as I impressed on him that any home of mine was equally his, he at last agreed that separate premises would be redundant. He brought with him the distinctive scent of Bradley brand tobacco, the acid-scarred desk of our bachelor days, an inexplicable new coat of yellow paint for our parlour – God only knows why – and an awareness, suffused through the marrow of my bones, that the world once again spun secure on its axis.

It was Watson who introduced me to our local cinema. I had been preparing for a long stint of espionage in America when it first opened its doors in 1911 and had steadfastly ignored its fripperies for the following decade. Watson was first drawn in by the clarion call of his profession. The owner (clever, pragmatic, and very vocally Swiss, _not German_ ) rented out his adjoining ballroom to skaters. Their endless accumulation of minor injuries filled Watson’s afternoons and, to a small extent, his pocketbook. He spent a few hours each week on call, and when no patients presented themselves, he ducked into the cinema to pass the time. He came home enraptured, describing astonishing visual tricks, elaborate physical stunts, and breathtaking vistas.

In general I enjoyed hearing him recount these wonders a good deal more than I enjoyed witnessing them myself. I allowed him to drag me to screenings now and again, but I was perpetually bored by their ubiquitous melodrama and pained by the mediocre organ playing that accompanied each pantomime.

I was far more fascinated by the technical process of film-making itself. So much so that I purchased an Aeroscope camera and experimented with immortalizing my hives. I hung a large white sheet across the far wall of my laboratory and projected the intricate movements of workers and drones in magnified, precisely focused bursts. These recordings proved invaluable for my research, and the nitrate film I used carried with it a thoroughly unpredictable tendency toward spontaneous combustion which added much to its delights.

Though temperamentally inclined to make films rather than watch them, I shall ever recall with gratitude one exception to that general rule. It was in mid-December of 1923 that Watson persuaded me to accompany him to the local premier of _Our Hospitality_ , the first full-length feature of a rising American star. Buster Keaton had begun performing in his family’s vaudeville act at the age of five, and once he entered the film industry in his early twenties he had earned a reputation for comedic brilliance and finely-honed athleticism. More importantly, to my taste, his acting style eschewed melodrama in favor of stoicism, and his slapstick translated into visually wry and near-balletic contortions. I had appreciated the brief ‘two-reeler’ comedies he had circulated in earlier years, and for once it took little convincing for Watson to lure me out for an evening’s entertainment.

 _Our Hospitality_ proved a light but inoffensive costume drama, yet I will own that my attention was not fully engaged until its river rapids sequence. One shot in particular caught my eye; Keaton was bobbing along through the frothing currents more slowly than any object naturally would, and I quickly hypothesized that he had attached himself to some underwater safety line. I had barely formed this conjecture before his rate of movement suddenly accelerated – his cord must have caught on some submerged debris and snapped – and he was abruptly racing down the river with the camera only barely keeping him in frame as he thrashed and struggled to keep his head above water.

Adrenaline sped my heartbeat, but I had barely begun to react before a quick edit cut short our glimpse of true peril and returned us to the illusory variety. Keaton had clearly proved a strong enough swimmer to save himself, and after fighting his way ashore off camera he must have doggedly returned to filming with barely a pause. The sequences unfolding before my eyes remained spectacular, but I could clearly discern their careful orchestration, with each disaster efficiently staged.

Just as my tension began to ease, the camera cut once again to reveal the film’s impending denouement: a waterfall awaited at the bend of the river, its gaping chasm eager to swallow the young hero and heroine.

For Watson as for me, every waterfall recalls that of Reichenbach. Had I known that we would be ambushed by such memories, I would certainly have kept Watson safe at home. I heard him gasp in the seat beside me, and I reached blindly for his hand so that he might reassure himself of my presence. His grip closed tight upon my wrist in the dark, and we watched in strained silence as Keaton dangled off a log at the very brink of the cascading torrents. His sweetheart, floating helplessly downstream, made her own slow descent toward the falls. The camera lingered on Keaton’s intelligent, determined face as he tried to imagine some way to save her.

How often, over the years, might Watson have dreamed that he, too, stood upon that brink, unable to intervene as the waters swept me into their depths?

Suddenly, the camera drew back, framing Keaton beside the great sheet of water. He had tied himself with rope to the overhanging log. Precisely at the point of no return, as the despairing girl reached the fatal drop, Keaton swung out from the cliff side and into the heart of the falls. The movement was perfect in its rationality, a parabola shaped by physics as unstoppable as the force of the river, and in the blink of an eye he had caught her hands. Even as she fell his rope pulled them both backwards toward the cliff and its ledges. They swung back and forth for a moment, flailing as he inhaled water and she kicked desperately at the air, and then he dropped her safe on solid ground.

There was a moment of shocked silence throughout the theatre, and then as one a great burst of approval and laughter rang out to supply the roar of the film's silent waterfall. I turned to Watson and saw with inexpressible delight that he was laughing, too. Flickering light reflected from the screen and caught the flash of his teeth and the fire in his eyes. He squeezed my wrist -- one firm, victorious pulse that told me without words that he considered our victory over the damned waters to be more complete and glorious than the stunt just enacted for our pleasure.

That December, in a cinema in Sussex, we at last disposed of one of the most pernicious and lingering ghosts of our past. The gift of laughter was an invaluable one, and I remained very warmly appreciative of Mr. Keaton’s artistry. That is, until the name of his next feature film was announced.

Sherlock, Jr.

I was not amused.


End file.
